A Writing Blog Written by the Mind of Kelvin Cech

It doesn’t matter if you’re running a business at home or organizing an online content marketing plan for a large company – online content marketing is the easiest, most effective and most cost-friendly form of marketing out there.

However, without a talented team of motivated experts to contribute to your strategy, chances are your content ship will stall before it launches.

And since you’re the captain of the ship and you’ve alreadyexplored your content, your niche and appropriate methods of online marketing that will work for your plan, it’s time to to gather a trusty crew capable of performing specific tasks that will directly contribute to the goals you’ve set.

If you’re giving the orders, then who’s going to steer? Who’s going to navigate? Who’s going to actually carry out the methods we talked about in part 3 of the Content Manager’s Guide? No matter what your business is marketing, the key to a successful online content plan is to take advantage of skill. Different people possess different skills, and girls clients only want guys companies with good skills. Thanks, Napoleon Dynamite.

Here are 3 steps to finding an ass-kicking team for your online content marketing plan.

1) Define Roles

You’ll need to refer back to the methods you feel will best suit your online content marketing plan in order to clearly define the specific roles required.

For example, if your marketing plan requires blog posts, a youtube video campaign and social media management, then ask yourself:

What skills do you need to ensure success in each area?

What sort of professional can contribute to the plan’s success?

Are you able to hire focused freelancers (whom you don’t have to pay once your campaign is launched?)

2) Interview Potential Contributors

You’ve put a lot of work into your strategy already, and it’s about to start paying off because it’s time to interview potential team members.

During an interview, ask yourself:

Does this person have the chops to contribute to your plan?

Is a personality that jives with yours important to your strategy?

Is this a person you’ll enjoy working with?

Depending on the size and scope of your marketing campaign, you may or may not already have the necessary expertise sitting beside you in your office. For example, the guide you’re currently reading is part of Function’s online content marketing plan, and since I’m a freelance copywriter, I write all the blog posts myself. Makes sense, right?

Conversely, I don’t know the first thing about graphic design, so I hired an outside company to build my beautiful website. Paper Leaf Design is a professional design studio, and having a website was important to Function’s content plan, thus I made the investment.

Go for coffee with a professional copywriter.

Have a skype meeting with a renowned blogger (like I did with Stanford at Pushing Social – both as part of his content strategy as well as part of mine).

Watch work from a potential video contributor.

When you meet with potential team members, ask questions and listen closely and objectively to the answers.

Tip: if you’re answering a lot of questions yourself and feel like you’re being interviewed, then you’re talking to the right players.

3) Captain The Ship

As the captain of the content marketing ship it’s up to you to manage your content plan. Be respectful of the various skills that are driving the strategy and constantly encourage the good work of your good workers to shine through. Good people, good workers – it’s just crazy enough to work!

Communicate: keep the team on track by consistently reinforcing the goals of the plan.

Get Updates: measure milestones like mail subscribers, social media followers and blog views.

Contribute: Add your two cents where appropriate without micro-managing.

Manage: ensure constant quality & consistency of tone.

Remember, you’re the manager of your online content marketing plan and ultimately it’s your responsibility to ensure a strategy is created that works. This doesn’t mean you need to micro-manage every aspect of your content constantly (everybody hates that), but you’ve been working on the details of your plan since the beginning, so no one on your team understands the potential of your content quite as keenly as its content manager (that’s you!).

Well, would you look at that? All of a sudden your online content marketing plan is underway. We may not have published anything just yet, but that’s alright because we’re taking the time to do this thing right the first time around. Once you’ve got everyone on board, it’s time to talk about the industry secrets that will lead to a successful online content marketing plan…

…Next week!

If anyone has any stories (good or bad) about interviewing potential team members, I’d love to hear ’em! Leave your story in the comments!